Monday, June 25, 2007
It Was A Dark and Icky Night
It was a mild January evening, and people had filled the restaurant's outdoor patio. As our group walked past the tables, one of my friends said, "This terrifies me." I don't know if she was reassured later by the chilly April, but we are all supposed to be terrified of the weather now.
It was a dark and icky night as a crowd gathered around the study inside the castle. They were staring at a trail of crimson blood sprayed across the floor and splattered against the walls like a monochromatic Pollack painting.
As we sauntered by the old wingback chair, there was an old crone bleeding out of her right eyeball. One of my companions squealed, "This is terrible!" I often wonder if the fact that the river of arterial flow stopped a few minutes after we left due to massive clots forming in the old woman's head made my friend feel any better. Uncontrolled bleeding gets so much hype. Sometimes it stops on it's own.
Enily Yoffe's column today in the Washington Post is quite juvenile and unserious. I expected more from the woman who pens the Dear Prudence advice column for Slate Magazine when she branches out into reporting on the environment.
Her column dismisses the idea that we should be concerned, saying that the weathermen can't predict the weather this summer, is scaring our children unnecessarily, and gets into some Al Gore bashing. She does this while completely misunderstanding the problem.
Global warming is a misnomer. Global climate change is the term that we should use. Nobody is saying that every square inch on the planet will all warm up by exactly 1.673 degrees on the exact same day.
On average the temperature will be higher. Wild weather events, spikes and drops in temperatures, changes in the gulf stream pattern, and melting ice caps raising the ocean levels will all disrupt stability in our global climate. Heat waves in March that cause trees to bloom might be followed by freezes in April that kill off the young buds.
If your understanding of climate change is that the weather channel just needs to change the average temperatures of each city by bumping the weather up one degree, perhaps you shouldn't agree to write a column in the Washington Post sharing your "knowledge" with the world.
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